UGC creator Jobs will drastically change with AI

User generated content (UGC) is content that is created by consumers and users of a brand and notably has higher engagement and conversion because of its authenticity and inherent social proof.

Influencer marketing and UGC often intersect to create more authentic and seamless promotions for brands that are more effective than traditional ‘salesy’ ads. In fact, UGC has 4x higher click through rates, a 50% reduction in cost per click, and websites that incorporate UGC can see on average an increase in 29% higher online purchases.

Combine that with the potential for brands to leverage the influencer’s audience for more reach creates a no brainer component to the overall marketing strategy.

With the increase in popularity and efficiency of influencer marketing it shouldn’t sound weird that global spending as a result of influencer marketing reached $34 billion in 2023. For perspective, it was $8 billion in 2018 and is estimated to make an astronomic climb to $52 billion by 2028.

This rise and predictable growth in spending as a result of influencer marketing indicates its major role in marketing strategies with brands allocating more and more of their budgets to influencer campaigns.

So in this article let’s discuss the feasibility, opportunities and cost effectiveness of leveraging AI avatars to tap into the benefits of influencer marketing at scale for a fraction of the cost.

The Shift from Human Influencers to AI Avatars

We will see more AI avatar influencers than human ones in 5-10 years. This statement is less bold when we consider how accurately AI video models already replicate humans at the moment and this is still early days.

If history has taught us anything, it’s that we always choose the path of least resistance, and it’s no different for creating content. The use of AI in content creation is growing and its easy to see why by looking at the pains:

1. scripting a video
2. gathering the gear to film and record
3. multiple takes to get the right shot
4. re-filming if you need a do-over
5. editing for hours, maybe days using third party software you have to learn

All before posting anything. This is the same for both UGC influencers, creators and marketers.

Our role at Argil in this is to help transition towards zero production so you can focus on what matters most: creating, without ever being held back by the aforementioned pains.

AI and technology like our deepfake maker is quickly making content indistinguishable even at this stage where we’re still at V1, and with the rapid rate of development with AI video it’s only set to get better. So if it’s possible for AI content from your clone to entertain your audience just as well, would you do it?

From a business or brand perspective, this opens up a lot of appealing benefits over human influencers: more brand control and the ability to create their own AI influencers with the brand’s ethos, values, and perfect recall of brand information to weave into content at any point. Brands can now produce far more content in far less time for far less costs

Contrary to any immediate thinking that this would decrease quality because of speed of production, this couldn’t be more wrong. With more volume and comprehensive analytics, iteration and fine tuning is far easier and provides more clarity into what resonates with a specific brand’s audience and customer base.

Interestingly, this doesn’t close the door to UGC brand influencers either. It presents profound opportunities to open up a new business model as they can start selling the rights of their ‘image’ for an agreed upon time period, essentially letting brands rent their AI avatar for unlimited content during that time.

This is an exciting opportunity for brands to get more bang for their buck, but also for you the influencer as it’s more scalable and you can start servicing more brands than you previously could given bandwidth from manual content production.

So what are the tools we can start using today to do this?

Synthesia Alternatives and Online Deepfake Generators

Synthesia lets you create studio quality videos with AI avatars and voiceovers as easily as making a slide deck without the need for any cameras, microphones or studios.

As established as they are in the AI video market, they are more specific to business use cases of training videos, customer service videos, and product walkthroughs. Their pricing plans also don’t reflect the needs of creators but more so enterprises. We recommend Argil because of its unique positioning to meet creator needs and specific mission to help streamline content production.

Content creators need flexibility and more focus on automated production and customisation. There are other Synthesia alternatives in this space but the differentiation will come from ease of use and UX as the main growth lever to wider adoption. As content creators ourselves, at Argil we’ve tailor built our platform to fit the needs and accessibility of creators to finally democratise content at scale.

Benefits of Using Argil for Brands

We aim to help the next generation of content creators completely sidestep video production to democratize content at scale finally.

Every creator and every brand understands the struggle of managing the workload that comes with trying to achieve content at scale without the budget for outsourcing most of the production. Deepfake generators like ours at Argil will take that burden off them so they can focus on growing and understanding their audience.

Argil is best placed to help brands generate their own UGC and find more cost effective ways of integrating virtual influencers for their marketing with AI avatars.

It’s still early days but if history’s patterns have a say in this, it would say content will become better with AI. We can clarify any skepticism this notion may have by taking a look at some virtual AI influencers who have taken over social media recently:

Lil Miquela: +20 million followers across Instagram, Facebook and Tik Tok

Lu do Magalu: +9 million followers across Instagram and Tik Tok

Barbie: +13 million followers across Instagram and YouTube

On an interesting side note regarding the adoption of AI avatars, according to Snapchat, 70% of their users have linked their account to a Bitmoji avatar. With AI avatars becoming more normal and popular across the social media spectrum, this presents profound business opportunities for both creators and brands going forward.

With Argil’s deepfake maker, here’s the process you could follow to make your AI avatar influencers and start creating content at scale:

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1. Train a video of you to get your AI avatar model (voice, body language, face)
2. Do more if you want multiple avatars
3. Script your videos yourself and use our AI assistant to create a draft for you
4. Choose transitions, B-rolls, and captions if you want
5. Generate your video
6. Edit the script to modify it

You now have as many of your own Lil Miquela’s as you want and they can make unlimited videos for you while matching any brand’s values and tone of voice.

With our auto captions and capability for multiple languages you can also create avatars to localise your brand’s content for different countries and demographics for wider global reach. This is understated leverage to tap into new markets, increase traffic and gain more brand visibility without the overhead production costs or time needed from traditional influencer marketing.

If you want to be one of the first to create your AI avatars with our technology, you can skip our waitlist here.

Considerations when adopting AI content

With all the potential upsides to creating your AI avatars, they are still relatively new so it presents double edged sword.

There is sentiment from small groups to say there are authenticity concerns and how audiences might perceive them but we can see from the adoption and acceptance of avatars on social media already that this is the natural push and pull that new technology always presents.

It is prudent, however, with your specific audience to start with integrating AI avatars alongside human-generated content for a balance in your content strategy at first, then iterate with data and sentiment.

The future of UGC and AI influencers

The broad landscape of both content creation and AI are evolving so fast we’re constantly seeing new opportunities to effectively leverage them both. One of them being, as we’ve discussed, how they’re presenting more opportunities and pathways for brands and UGC influencers connect with their audiences.

They come with their share of concerns around authenticity as well but despite these hurdles the trajectory is clear from patterns in history. AI is set to become a mainstay part of content creation and Argil will play a major role. For content creators, influencers and brands this is the time to familiarise yourselves with these tools as the future is undoubtedly a blend of human creativity and AI efficiency.

If you’re ready to get started with Argil, skip our waitlist and sign up here.

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